When you realize that for the first time it’s us (computer interface designers/developers) building experiences that try to adjust to THEM (the users, *humans*, who have been using language all their lives), not them adjusting to our experiences (like command line interfaces with cryptic commands vaguely resembling English, or GUIs with buttons and dropdown menus, or learning how to use a mouse), then you know you have an enormous (but exciting) challenge ahead of you.

In our own chatbot implementation of “Edward”, a virtual host for the Radisson Blu Edwardian hotel chain, we saw that 14% of messages fall under the “politeness” category, i.e. users saying “hello”, “thanks”, or “goodbye”.